When baking bread and making a stew or boiling meat with vegetables,
small pieces of the dough can be broken off and dropped into the pan
to form dumplings. If yeast or baking-powder has been worked into the
dough the dumplings will be light though plain, but if they are wanted
a little richer they should be made with chopped suet mixed with flour
and water.
The ordinary plain suet dumpling requires half as much chopped suet as
flour in weight, and a little salt. It is mixed with either water or
milk to make into a stiff dough—it is lightest when somewhat stiff—and
if tying it up in a cloth to boil in water allow room for the pudding
to swell. Boil a suet dumpling for two hours at least; it will not
harm by being boiled longer. These plain dumplings are wholesome and
excellent food especially in a cold climate, and should be eaten with
syrup or butter and sugar. Sugar is, indeed, one of the most necessary
items on the colonist’s bill of fare. The plain suet can be varied by
mixing with it stoned raisins or currants or by using syrup in place of
milk to mix the ingredients, adding a little ginger for flavour. Or the
suet paste may be rolled out and spread with jam or soaked dried fruits
and treacle, rolled up again, wrapped round with a cloth and boiled in
fast boiling water, or folded in a buttered paper and steamed, for a
couple of hours, making a light and appetising roll pudding. Or again,
the paste may be rolled out and used to line a basin, the interior
being filled with sliced apples and other fruits and sugar, covered
with a top crust, then tied over and boiled for as long again. Or the
centre may be filled with pieces of steak cut small and rolled in flour
and seasoned with salt and pepper, a little water put in to make gravy,
a top crust put on, and tied down, and this boiled for about four hours.
If the colonist has built him a good oven and is ambitious of making
pastry, having a fond recollection of jam tarts and apple pies as made
at home, let him take a nice clean board, and put into a basin say a
couple of pounds of flour, two big spoonfuls of dry baking-powder, a
teaspoonful of salt, and into this flour rub lightly about a pound
of lard or good dripping, rubbing till the flour feels like dry
breadcrumbs in his hands. Mix this to a stiff paste with cold water,
then cut off portions and roll out on a floured board. If a proper
rolling-pin is not at hand a bottle will answer the purpose.
If it is a fruit pie that is contemplated, fill a dish with pared and
sliced apples, or plums washed clean, or other fruit, cover well with
sugar, add a little water and then cover with a crust that has been
rolled out to about half an inch thick. Make a little hole in the top
for the steam to escape, and pinch the edges well and cut them round
even with the edges of the dish. Put into an oven that is very hot
and bake long enough to cook the fruit well, shielding the crust if
necessary with paper. Fruits like blackberries, bilberries, damsons,
etc., want well cooking, and should be partly done before the crust is
put on. Where no pie-dish is at hand, roll out a sheet of paste and
heap up the cut or picked fruit in the centre, with the sugar, and then
fold up the paste to make it like a valise and pinch the edges well.
Bake it on a greased tin.
The good old-fashioned turnover or pasty is ever welcome, and needs
but to have a piece of paste rolled out to a convenient sized round,
and on half is spread the jam, mince, or fruit, and the other half is
turned over, the edges pinched together, and it is baked on a tin in
hot oven. The Cornish pasty has sliced potatoes, shred bacon, a trifle
of onion and pepper and salt, and is folded over and baked in the same
way. These are delicious to eat hot. When making a meat pie, cook the
meat well before putting on the pastry crust.
This plain short pastry is all that any colonist will require, at
least until an elaborate kitchen equipment is at his service, but if
he objects to rubbing in the shortening with his hands, he may mix
the flour and water to a stiff paste, roll it out on a floured board,
spread the shortening on this with the blade of a knife, fold up and
roll out again at least twice. This way saves using the hands.
V